VOICE, A PERFORMANCE ART WEB SERIES is a 159 minute movie about Psyche Smith, a bipolar woman whose psychoses begin traveling in outer space just as she enters therapy. VOICE was shot splitscreen/greenscreen with one actress playing all three characters.

The world of VOICE is composed of original montages incorporating NASA footage, anatomical diagrams of the Human nervous system and documentary-style outdoor footage.

While the psychoses, Echo & Lyssa, tour outer space dressed to the nines in beautiful clothing, often including hats, Psyche – when not wearing the uniform of the depressed, a bathrobe – begins to find her own heart and starts painting again.

Psyche’s therapy sessions are portrayed through monologues given directly through “the Fourth Wall” to the camera.

VOICE is not an autobiographical downer confessional about bipolar disorder. VOICE is about the infinity of freedom and joy that one can achieve through self-discovery and following his/her bliss.

VOICE was an official selection of Hong Kong Arthouse Film Festival, 2017, and received an Honorable Mention from LA Underground Film Forum in 2016. Since 2015, VOICE festival cuttings have screened in venues and festivals around the world – London, Marrakech, Berlin, Barcelona, Milan – including VisualContainer TV, HearteartH Project, International Video Art Exchange Program, and CM Projects’ Chemcraft Exhibit. Most recently (2017), VOICE FESTIVAL CUTTING 3 was selected by Underground FilmFest and Black Underground FilmFest, and given an Honorable Mention nod by Experimental Film Forum (Los Angeles).

I made this movie all by myself in my livingroom except for 2 follow shots by my husband. I created the montages. I created the sounds using my own voice and everyday sounds in my environment. There are 24 teasers in this Vimeo album:

“This is called Voice because she has a lot to say. And she makes you think.” Pamela Pitt review.

A limited edition of professionally authored DVDs is available on Etsy and Saatchi Art. Prices on my art films are equivalent to moderate prices on artist’s prints and or unique drawings and small paintings and sculpture.

I have made autobiographical art about mental illness for twenty five years, including sculpture and solo theatre. One of my friends and theatre collaborators told me I’ve made so much art about it that I’ve almost cured myself of bipolar disorder. By the time I began working on VOICE, a performance art movie, it wasn’t autobiographical anymore. I was able to make surrealistic fiction about a middle-class woman who is so clueless about mental health that she is too embarrassed to tell her therapist that she was treated for an eating disorder as a young woman; a woman who is so out of touch with her inner self that her psychoses leave the planet without her. Also, the woman has had artist’s block since college – that’s not me! When the movie opens, she is a shell and her life has fallen apart.

I could never let my life fall apart like my character does. That’s not in my makeup. But I could also never let myself be vulnerable and as open to change as she is. I envy her vulnerability. I’m sure I’ve BEEN as vulnerable as anyone else; but as soon as I FEEL vulnerable, unlike the character in my movie, I become aggressive instead of falling apart.

This year, VOICE made me what is probably one of the best friends I’ve ever had. Her response to the movie has me in tears every time I think about it because she made it so personal. I believe that a work of art is not completed by its maker, but instead continues to be made by its viewers.

Years ago I toured a solo show about me and a mean voice that started inside my head when I was 8 years old. In the show, I play myself and the voice fighting constantly for control. When you’ve been living like that for 40 years, you can’t help but have a sense of humor or you’ll REALLY go crazy. But my audiences were usually dead silent in what I thought were the most deadly funny parts of my show until one night at the Midnight Sun in Olympia, Washington when the 15 schizophrenic outpatients I’d sold discounted tickets to, laughed so hard that I kept having to stop the show and I forgot some of my lines. That was art continuing in the viewer. My BFF making me cry about her response to VOICE is art continuing in the viewer.

A movie that I greenscreened by myself in my livingroom about a bipolar woman in therapy whose psychoses abandon her for outer space was such catharsis that I have to let it go – I have to let it continue. Thanks to Onlineum for spurring me to expedite subtitles so that VOICE could be part of Onlineum’s launch this past week.

I was expecting a rejection today, but it was not quite. You can make a crazy movie in your living room about being bipolar with your psychoses in outer space; and get an honorable mention in a cool film festival in LaLaLand!